MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Wedding’ Marries Life, Love, Brutal Conflict

Sometimes it’s better to look at a large issue through a more simplified focal point: the strategy of writer-director Michel Khleifi in his disturbing, lyrical “Wedding in Galilee” (opening today for a weeklong run at the Nuart).

The film, suggestively and poetically, examines Israeli-Arab conflicts through one daylong event, a wedding ceremony in a small, dusty Palestinian village. It’s an occupied town under strict military curfew. But because the nuptials are those of the son of the village mukhtar or elder (Ali Mohammed Akili), the Israeli military governor (Mabram Khouri) agrees to relent for the day, provided he and his staff are present as guests.

The governor’s motives are mixed: a desire for closer surveillance as well as better communication. The mukhtar’s motives are slightly purer: He wants the wedding to take place on schedule. But for his more extreme neighbors--bitter ex-prisoners, young rebels--this accession is shameful, a stain on the village’s honor.

Throughout the festivities--staged by Khleifi with a beatific relish in tradition--there’s an uneasy rapprochement. The idealized, mythically patriarchal leaders mistake the tensions brewing at the party--which Khleifi crystallizes in one perhaps too explicit metaphor: The mukhtar’s escaped horse stands in a mine field, while the mukhtar, his younger son and some Israeli soldiers try--gingerly or clumsily--to coax it out.

Khleifi is a Palestinian, born and raised in Nazareth. But he’s not rancorous. The Israelis are not villains, but typical harassed occupation soldiers, all too willing for a respite. (The film’s most touching communion is between the Arab wives and a young Israeli woman soldier, taken faint at the feast.) Even the young Palestinian firebrands, whose kidnaping plot threatens to destroy the wedding, are less fanatics than misguided youths--trapped, like everyone else, in a specific social role.

Khleifi tries to take a cosmic view, one that doesn’t fixate on the intricate network of grudges and hatreds but instead plays the instruments of life or love--the wedding trappings, the gowns of red and yellow, black and gold--against the tools of death: the guns, mines and knives. We’re always aware of that schism--and as the crisis ripens, it seems increasingly futile and absurd.

“Wedding in Galilee” (Times-rated: Mature, for nudity and sex) has already received the Critics’ Prize at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival, First Prize at the San Sebastian Film Festival and the Best Film Award in Belgium, Khleifi’s current home. But, though it’s a fine film--beautifully shot, by Walther Van den Ende, and wonderfully acted, especially by Akili, Khouri and Sonia Amar (as the bride’s fiery sister)--the prizes probably reflect a respect for the film’s anti-war sympathies as much as delight in its artistic achievements.

It’s a cherishable film, but not quite a masterpiece. Something about the characters is oversimplified, something about the ending slightly rushed. Even so, Khleifi’s championing of life against death, love against hate, is deeply touching--and his evocation of the poetry of this little village is moving and joyous.

‘WEDDING IN GALILEE’

A Lasa Films release of a Marisa Films/LPA co-production. Director/script Michel Khleifi. Music Jean-Marie Senia. Camera Walther Van den Ende. Editor Marie Castro Vasquez. With Ali Mohammed Akili, Nazih Akly, Mabram Khouri, Anna Achdian, Sonia Amar.